Arena--Contract manufacturer's perspective
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
As a contract manufacturer, we have a seat on our customer's Arena account. This provides our company access to their PLM in order to process changes and review their BOMs, DWGs, and files, so we can manage their production needs. Arena is used by various departments at my company, including program management, manufacturing engineering, design engineering, and quality engineering. Arena addresses the regulatory requirements of change control for medical devices.
Pros
- I love being able to review a redlined version of a BOM. It allows us to easily digest what has changed on a customer's BOM without having to ask them too many questions.
- Having the thumbnail of associated files next to part numbers makes it easy to navigate and download files.
- I like the email alerts for downloaded files.
Cons
- I find the search function a little annoying.
- I wish the search would provide suggested or related results based on your search.
- Definitely has an impact on product quality
- Arena has been significantly helpful in transfer of new products from our customer to us for production.
- Vendor Reputation
This doesn't match exactly. But my company does not actually purchase Arena. We have a seat on our customer's account--we are their contract manufacturer.
We did not implement Arena company-wide at my company. Generally, we hold a quick training session when a new team member is brought onto a project that utilizes Arena. The learning curve is generally pretty flat to get people acquainted with the basics functions we utilize within Arena.
- Omnify and Epicor ERP
I have had limited experience, in terms of the QMS portions of Arena, so it is hard for me to compare the two.
Comments
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